Green Hell : Easy Links

Since I've undertaken the task of teaching Maggie the rudiments of physical self-defense, I’ve gained a new measure of respect for those who teach MA/SD professionally. Those gents must have the patience of the saints – an admirable trait, especially to one of my temperament. There are times at which patience simply isn’t my strong suit. Like my bro Alan Deal, I, too, think it entirely appropriate to swat flies with a sledgehammer, if it ends their damned buzzing immediately.

Because of this, the teaching experience has been rather beneficial for me. I’ve found that at forty – well, next month, anyway – I have a good bit more patience than I did during my late twenties and early thirties. That’s not saying much, mind you, but it’s a start. I was rather surprised at my own forbearance during Maggie’s lessons, especially when the dreaded White Belt Fuckups occurred.

The funniest of these happened on day two, and I did indeed “lose it”, but in a rather humorous way. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m going to try an experiment: “Hard core” self-defense and body mechanics, with the more formal aspects of systematized combat servings as adjuncts to, rather than as the focus of the lessons.

This being the case, I decided to give Maggie a “real” self-defense lesson. After I’d taught her a few ways to break a front chokehold (the “Hollywood choke”), and reviewed escapes from wrist-grabs, I thought of another realistic defense to teach her.

My gal tends bar, so a defense against an overhead club attack seemed reasonable thing to teach her. I’ve spent quite enough time in various dives to know that when the drunks “come out to play”, they often attempt to brain each other (and sometimes, innocent bystanders) with beer mugs, pitchers, broken pool-cues, and whatever other improvised clubs they can lay hands upon. Ergo it seemed a most realistic scenario for which to train.

A rather effective counter to this particular form of attack consists of a standard karate rising block (age uke), after which the cretin’s intended victim reaches under said cretin’s arm, seizes his own wrist, and applies pressure downwards and backwards. I’ve been on the receiving end of this one enough times to know that it hurts like hell, and can easily dislocate the jughead’s shoulder (Yes, I was working with an overzealous white belt when I discovered just how painful it could be…), so it made its way into the training regimen.

Maggie was completely new to the SD/MA field, so I decided to teach her the rising block first. This part of the lesson went over without a hitch. She grasped the basics of the technique so quickly; I was both pleased with and very proud of her. After a few reps on each side, it was time to show her the remainder of the combination. As a general rule, I don’t like to train with “live” weapons unless I know my training partner very well, or am too loaded to care, so an alternative was needed.

Since J.R. will probably pop up unexpectedly, read this piece, and then leave a comment to the effect of: “Oh yeah? I seem to recall a few incidents involving – oh, let’s see – li’l things like my sabre, your claymore, Bowies, Arkansas toothpicks, that glorified Chinese meat cleaver o’ your’n, an’…” I had to add the qualifiers. This being the case, I’ll mention that I’ve known J.R. for over thirty years, and that on all the aforementioned occasions, I was too loaded to care. Nyah nyah! Thought ye’d trip me up thar, did ye’, Bubba?

Enough about that. Teaching Maggie the drill with the escrimas my Bro, Ben, picked up for me during a side trip to ‘Frisco’s Chinatown while visiting his Da, seemed inadvisable, due to her inexperience and my rustiness. “Back in the day”, Ben and I would go at it with ‘em, but then again, we were both nuts, both adrenaline junkies, practiced several hours a day, and both had fairly decent control.

The sumbitch did nearly knock me out with a ridgehand to the side of the neck during a sparring match some years ago, but accidents happen, right?

At any rate, during one of our more lucid moments, we each made a pair of “boffers,” that we might practice in safety, thereby affording our friends and families a modicum of peace-of-mind. The term “boffer”, by the way, is one I swiped from the delusional – uh, I mean “history conscious” – SCA folks with whom I briefly associated, during the ‘80s and ‘90s. A boffer is simply a simulated weapon, made of foam and duct tape. To simulate the escrimas, Ben and I cut four 18” lengths of PVC conduit, sheathed them in the foam tubes used for insulating water pipes, and then wrapped them in duct tape. Having made them, we could then pound on one another at leisure, without worrying our loved ones.

Speaking of loved ones…

The very idea of handing Maggie a live stick made me cringe. The effects of cyclothymia may interfere with my judgment at times, but hey! I may be crazy, but I ain’t stupid! Fetching one of the padded sticks from the basement, I handed it to her and told her to strike at my head. This she did – a snap blow, delivered from shoulder height.

The blow also snapped my patience. Congratulating myself on my decision to practice with padded sticks, I seized the simulated weapon from her and chased her around the driveway, swatting her with it.

“How the hell (whap!) am I supposed to teach you (whap!) how to defend (whap!) against an overhead shot (whap!) when you won’t throw one?” Finally, after much explaining on my part (trying not to go into Sluggo Mode all the while), I got her to perform the attack correctly, so I could show her how to defend against it.

This led to an interesting chain of thoughts.

I’ve heard it said that one should always strive to preserve the “beginner’s mind”. Based upon last week’s experiences, I’m beginning to think that’s horseshit. The mind of a complete beginner, as often as not, the mind of a booger-eatin’ feeb. The vast “consciousness gap” between even a person of my limited experience (thirteen years ain’t shit, folks. I have friends who’ve been training for forty or more…) and a beginner is quite a vast one.

I might add – and rather snarkily – that I now understand why some Chinese MA instructors make their students spend their first year of training doing nothing but throwing straight punches from a horse stance: They simply can’t handle anything more demanding!

Snarkiness aside, it was also a learning experience for me. Above all, I learned that “Never assume” is anything but a cliched platitude. It’s damned sound advice. With over a decade in the field (and a rather “interesting” life) under my belt, I made assumptions that would never even occur to someone whose life experiences had been vastly different from my own.

This became even clearer as the lesson progressed.

“No, don’t block the stick with your arm. Why the hell would you do that? Do you like having broken limbs?”

“No, don’t block my hand with your arm. I can dig in with the butt of the stick as if it were a yawara.” (At this point, I had to explain what a yawara was…)

“Yes, that’s right. Block the arm with your arm. Now reach under – yep, just like that – and apply the lock.”

Once she “grokked” the technique, she pulled it off very nicely. Every nerve ending in my shoulder was screaming in pain, and I was gladdened thereby. I suppose the satisfaction of seeing one’s charge perform a task correctly is the payoff for enduring all the irritating mistakes novices often make. By the end of the workout, I was very, very proud of her, and could actually laugh at being bonked on the schnozz with my own practice weapon. It was pretty damned funny, come to think of it. “Character building”, as my late Da often called similar ordeals.

I hope he was correct.

The matter of developing my own character (and it definitely needs developing) is one matter, but teaching my wife-to-be self-defense is another entirely. As I mulled over our training sessions and ran what I’d derived alongside the thoughts that arose from witnessing the “bulletman” demonstration at the BBQ, I reached several interesting (if somewhat disturbing) conclusions.

I realized that many of the physical techniques I’ve learned over the years don’t constitute “self-defense” at all, but rather, are purely offensive. This is what ‘90s yuppies called an “area of opportunity”, and I’ve made it a point to take every opportunity to remedy the situation.

I realize that the best form of self-defense is the near-instinctive avoidance born of situational awareness. The movie The Karate Kid was what I call “heartwarmingly hokey”, but when Miyagi said “Best block, no be there,” he was right on the money. The “shadow side” – if I may purloin a term from Glenn Morris -- of this cutesy (but accurate) phrase was best expressed by my Bro “Doc” Marks: “In the dark, from behind, at a distance.”

Unfortunately, this leads to another chicken/egg problem. In 1994, I took my first real steps out of a fog of almost complete insanity. I give full and direct credit to the martial arts as the first rung of an escape ladder leading me away from the lure of what Freud called Thanatos. To a person with no background in martial arts, that statement may seem wildly contradictory, but the saying: “The sword that takes life also gives life” is widely known among “hipsters” in the field.

I could go on at length about this matter, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll cut to the chase. To make a long story short, the more methods of mayhem I learned, the more I realized that what I was capable of doing to others could be done to me. That’s a profoundly sobering realization, and one that many students of the martial arts never experience, unfortunately. When one understands this on a gut level, he begins to view conflict within the proper framework.

Now the chicken/egg problem pops up. In my case, the physical experiences (and my ability to extrapolate certain outcomes, based upon said) led me to increase my awareness of the mechanics and dynamics of “hairy” situations, in the interest of avoiding them.

My present quandary stems from teaching a person who has learned neither the “alphabet of conflict” (there’s a phrase worthy of a die-hard neocon, no?) nor the oft painful physical consequences of standing on the tracks and failing to notice that an express train is bearing down on her. I’d like to teach her how to determine that the train is coming when it’s still miles away – a skill shared by both rural and urban urchins – but she’s often quite resistant to acknowledging the reality of oncoming trains.

I need more time to analyze her thought processes. Only in this way can I determine whether physical stimuli will lead to increased mental activity, or if the “feedback loop” will be best activated by taking the opposite approach.

I’ll keep you posted.